changes to be an, ah, present member of this family.”
Some might call her slowly evolving plan a step backward. Sydney considered it a step sideways. A way to have it all—a job she loved and time with her family. And if Wanderlust truly was salivating to lock her in? She should be able to negotiate a deal that would allow that.
“I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to being tickled at the thought of you popping over to see me every week. I could teach you how to make a Southern jam cake with caramel frosting. The secret’s to tip in a little bourbon.”
Biting her lip to keep from laughing, Sydney said solemnly, “That’s the secret to a lot of things in life.”
“We could make a cake for you to take to Alex tonight when I’m finished with this nonsense.” Daisy turned up her nose at the hanging bag of chemo drugs. “Nothing complicated. Just a dump cake. Whatever ingredients I don’t have, we can borrow from Hazel.”
Sydney realized she’d just been given an opening. One that laid the groundwork for her inevitable ‘broken engagement.’ Plus, she’d get to stop hiding her tear-reddened eyes from her grandmother.
“I’m…well, I’m not seeing Alex tonight. We had a big fight.”
After making a raspberry, Daisy said, “Pish tosh. You’ll get over it. Men will make mistakes. Again and again. As long as they keep trying to do better, they’re worth keeping around.”
It’d be easy to let her think Alex was the jerk. The whole thing was made up anyway. But Sydney refused to lie any more about this particular situation.
She grabbed the folded blanket at the foot of the recliner and pulled it up to her chin. “Actually, Gram, I’m the one who screwed up. Then I hid it from him. Lied—by omission. For a long time. I came clean, but he’s, ah, rightfully pissed at me.”
For a long minute, the only sound was the steady beep of the monitors and the IV machine. “That’s disappointing to hear. You know better than that. I raised you better than that.”
Oh, no question.
Trying to fix everything for everyone kept backfiring on her. It got Alex fired. Gave her mess of a host a boost with that article that went viral instead of saving her team. Even recommending Nora to Alex as the inn cook had caused a huge fight with Teague, Amelia, and Everleigh.
“I was trying to protect him, not myself. It backfired,” Sydney said simply.
“Did you apologize?”
Seriously? “Of course I did. Multiple times. He’s too mad to accept it, though. Which I understand. I sort of ruined his life. Or at least, made him veer off the path he’d planned to take.”
“Why does it sound like you’ve given up?”
Because that was what mature people did. “I have to respect his decision.”
Daisy hooted. Loudly enough that a nurse wheeled over on a stool to peek in the doorway. “Balderdash. Is that what you learned in all your time traveling the globe? If you make a mistake on a shoot, you just pack up and move on to the next thing?”
“Well, ah, yeah.”
“That’s not how the world works, hon. You hunker down, you work through things. You don’t run away. Or you shouldn’t, after all this time.”
Wow. That was a pointed jab she had not been expecting. How had the older woman so deftly connected the problem with Alex to the problem she’d been harboring with her hometown for so many years?
They were totally different issues.
Weren’t they?
Sydney looked at herself in the mirror over the sink across the treatment room. Sloppy ponytail. Yoga pants and a sweatshirt from Australia with a kangaroo crossing sign. No makeup.
She was a mess. Inside and out.
Slowly, she asked, “You think I ran away from here? When I left for college?”
“Oh, definitely. The eighteen-year-old version of a kid who packs two PB&Js in a backpack with a teddy bear and runs away to sleep in the neighbor’s treehouse. And the parents know where he is the whole time. They know that he needs the space, and will come back when he realizes that home is a heck of a lot better than a drafty old treehouse.”
“Gram, I love you. And Dad, and Cam and Kim. My choice was never to leave you guys. My choice was to…to…find what I wanted.”
“Did you find it?”
Hmm.
She’d spent years driving herself relentlessly, working for a heartless company that wanted to punish her for taking a sabbatical (an actual entry in the employee manual) to take care